Somewhere out beyond the last traffic light, past the shopping malls and the fading billboards, there's a place called Fat Cat City.
The sun is shining. The radio is broken. Somebody is selling dreams from the back of a van. There are strange noises coming from the house next door and, for reasons nobody can quite explain, everybody seems to be humming the same tune. Welcome to the world of Ambassador Hazy.
The solo recording project of Sterling DeWeese returns with Ain't No Love In Fat Cat City, a kaleidoscope of contagious hooks, psychedelic pop invention and artfully crafted songs, laid to tape and blasted into brilliant colour.
The Elephant 6 Collective are a useful signpost here that wonderful intersection where psychedelic experimentation and pure pop instinct collide, but Ambassador Hazy has its own strange chemistry. These songs are bright, melodic and immediately inviting, yet they're packed with enough odd little corners, lyrical twists and sonic detours to keep the whole thing permanently moving.
Fat Cat City kicks the door open. Then comes Tremble And Shake,before Sterling explores what on earth we are collectively doing in Good Luck To the Human Race. Things become increasingly philosophical with Doesn't Make Sense No More and Guidance Is Internal, while Dappled In Sunlight finds the whole operation briefly bathing in glorious psychedelic sunshine. And then you turn the record over. There's Don't You Think It's Funny, Tombstone Laid, See How Much, the wonderfully titled A Dappled Joint, and Don't Ya Put The Brake On Me before we arrive at Repetition.
Which, as it turns out, might be the secret to the whole thing. Because these songs are built to get inside your head. A hook appears. It circles around. A melody sticks to the inside of the skull. A strange little phrase comes back at exactly the wrong or perhaps precisely the right moment. Repetition becomes hypnosis. Hypnosis becomes colour. Colour becomes Fat Cat City.
Sterling DeWeese has created a record that feels simultaneously familiar and completely peculiar, the sound of someone who understands the seductive power of a great pop song but isn't particularly interested in leaving it alone. There are sunshine melodies here, fuzzy edges, psychedelic shadows and enough melodic invention to keep the whole thing sparkling. Ain't No Love In Fat Cat City may tell us there ain't no love in the place. We're not entirely convinced. Because there's an awful lot of it here. Ambassador Hazy – Ain't No Love In Fat Cat City. Turn it up. Let the colours in. And whatever you do... Don't Ya Put The Brake On Me. Mastered by John McBain Artwork by Jake Blanchard
